As I sit here, early January, 2021, I look at the trips we’ve got planned and it’s looking pretty thin on the ground. We do have a few weeks in France booked, carried forward from last year, but that’s it. We have looked at many of our favourite sites and they are fully booked, everywhere. Hmm..
Taking stock though, we haven’t even got a caravan at the moment. We sold it back in November 2020. We weren’t happy with the layout and quite a few other things had just started to get on our nerves. We use the caravan a lot and it’s important to get things right. (That’s my justification for selling it)
So, no caravan and no trips booked, this is absolutely a first for us. We (Mandy) is normally so organised, but the lockdown has sucked the life out of our enthusiasm to pre plan anything.
We’re even a bit nervous about booking a ferry for the summer trip to France. Firstly, we’re not 100% sure we’ll have a caravan by then, the lockdown(s) might affect the build date. Secondly, we have no idea it’ll be OK to travel due to travel any restrictions.
All in all it’s a bit difficult to look forward to any caravan related fun in the near future. We did have York booked for early February, it was cancelled last year due to lock down, this has also been cancelled by CAMC as we’re currently in a nation lockdown. Or Lockdown Part Three.
Due to cancellations, we have no end of shows on hold (concerts etc), which we booked and have all been rescheduled, then rescheduled again. There’s about 6 or 7 shows and to be honest we keep forgetting about them. These are dotted about our calendar in an unscheduled way, we obviously haven’t chosen the rescheduled dates.
There is also the concern over the vaccine. I’m not overly worried about having the actual jab, just the timing. I don’t really want to have the jab appointment pop up halfway through our month in France. I know these are all “1st world” problems and things could be much worse for us, but that’s the point in having a blog, to moan, haha.
Good Times Ahead!
That’s all a bit depressing isn’t it. The unknown I mean. Like you, we enjoy planning trips, looking forward to things, it’s why we go to work – and why we have a caravan (normally!) So, having that taken away from us, if only temporarily, is worrying and a little bit stressful. It starts to affect your mental health – being stuck in all day and not really having a great deal to look forward to. And what you do have to look forward to could be cancelled at anytime. Normally about now I start to annoy everyone with a “how many days to France trip” tweets. Or as Mandy might say, a countdown to when I’m next hospitalised. I keep telling her it’s a coincidence that everytime we go to France I’m ill!
However, I have mixed emotions at this time. I’m obviously looking forward to getting our caravan, when it arrives, hopefully before Easter.
Yes, this situation will all blow over and hopefully this time next year it will be like a bad dream. The trouble is, we can’t get excited about any trips, as we’re not sure they’ll go ahead. One part of me says, just book stuff, you can cancel if you have to, but it’s getting the motivation to book things. Also, as mentioned earlier, it seems a lot of people have already got the motivation to book things looking at the availability.
We’re just not last minute people, we like certainty and we like having plans in concrete.
I know from our facebook page that a lot of people are already booking things and we really are getting left behind. We only have one cast iron booking and that’s a 2 week (or is it 3 I can’t remember) booking on a site in the South of France, but as I say, we’re nowhere near ready, mentally, to book the Ferry crossing, or the other French sites we’ll need to book for the duration of our summer holiday.
Let me know below in the comments below of your travel plans, it might inspires us – and boy, do we need it!
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